You’ve got a great idea for a software product. Maybe it’s an app, maybe it’s a website. But you don’t know the first thing about coding.
You’re not the first to face this problem.
We’ll walk you through a common sense process for hiring a software development team when you don’t have a technical background. We’ll focus on practical steps, easy to use tools, and clear communication strategies to help you turn your vision into a real, shipping product without doing any coding yourself.
Know your product
To keep things simple we’re going to assume your dream product is a SaaS that is going to launch on the web, but its website is going to be designed “mobile-first” to maximise reach. This also means that it will be easier to create a dedicated app in the future because you’ll have already done some of the design work.
Your first mission is to know your product. You need to know who it is for and what problem it solves and that the intended audience is willing to pay for it. You can find most of that out by talking to a few of your potential customers.
Know your competitors
You might have already taken this step. Your knowledge of the competition, or lack thereof, might be the very reason you came up with the idea.
Either way, you should research the competition. Google can help with that, but so can sites like G2 and Capterra. You want to identify your competitors’ target market, their USP, and their feature sets. Use that information to verify your own features and start drafting your own USP.
You may want to go so far as to sign up for free trials and see how the competition works, while also taking screenshots of feature implementations that you like or want to avoid.
Know your features
You’re not a coder. You might also not be a graphic designer or a UX designer. But you have used a lot of websites, a lot of SaaS, and in your competitor research you should have become quite familiar with what similar products are doing.
This is where you need to start laying out how your service will work. If this is something you’ve never done before you should start with AI-assisted tools like Creatie or UIzard. If you have some experience you might use Figma instead and draw out pages and interactive elements manually. Don’t forget you’re designing “mobile first”.
You want to end up with clearly defined flows for getting users logged in and flows for how they access and interact with your product’s features.
Understand the big picture
A service offered via a website is more than just a few web pages. Your product will also interact with a range of 3rd party services depending on what you choose to build and run yourself versus what you defer to someone else (like payments).
Using 3rd party services is an effective strategy to reduce development time, but you will need to keep an eye on costs. So, launch with these kinds of services supporting your product, then look at which ones you can replace with inhouse solutions later down the line if it makes sense.
Here are the main services your SaaS is likely to use:
- Cloud hosting. Most likely AWS. Many other hosting providers build on top of AWS and add $$$ to the cost
- Authentication. It should be as easy as possible for users/customers to sign up and sign in. You don’t want to build this yourself. Read more about authentication here to understand why.
- Payments. You can’t do this yourself. The big ones are Stripe, Square and PayPal.
- Database. You might rely on AWS’s solutions or need to use a service like Firebase or Supabase.
- Customer Support. Checkout Zendesk, Freshdesk and Intercom to see which has the features you think you’ll need once you have enough users to worry about.
You can use services like StackShare and BuiltWith to research your competitors or similar sites and see what their tech stack looks like. You will find all kinds of new things to read about. We also have an article about some services that can cut months off your runway.
Find your team
This is where our bias starts to show. And our pitch kind of starts.
There are different paths to hiring a team of developers. You can assemble a ragtag team of Fiverr and Upwork freelancers, but that does require the experience to judge the abilities of your candidates and the ability (and patience) to manage a dispersed team that might end up spanning multiple timezones. This can work.
A better path (we believe) is to hire your development team from a software development team extension provider like SoftwareSeni. It doesn’t have to be SoftwareSeni, but you want someone like SoftwareSeni. And it’s called a team extension because your team of one (or two) is being extended. It’s not a separate team, it’s not an agency you communicate with via an account manager – it is your team that you manage on day-to-day basis.
Why we recommend this option for non-technical founders is because it comes with multiple layers of support.
The support inherent in a software development team extension
Unlike hiring remote developers off of Fiverr or Upwork, everyone on your team extension works together in the same location with a complete set of support staff. This means things like HR, training, performance management, etc are being handled for you.
And, speaking for SoftwareSeni, you also get a dedicated project manager to help you plan and navigate each stage of the software development process. Your idea might be your first product. It isn’t theirs.
The result is a multi-level team dedicated to the success of your product. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be quick, easy or straightforward – building software never is – but it does mean you will be avoiding the headaches and downsides of working with multiple freelancers.
Finding your software development team provider
Google is your friend here. Find providers. Reach out to them and find out what products have they built that are similar to yours in terms of tech and features. You want to find providers with teams that have worked on similar projects.
Talk to them about your product. Ask them how their teams would build it and how they would run it once it was launched. Ask them about recommended team composition, rough timelines (never rely on these timelines, this is more for comparison between providers) and cost estimates.
The classic “joke” is that software development can be fast, cheap and good, but you only get to choose two. Those three numbers are mostly based on team size, and team size is the major variable you have control over. It will affect your budget and your timeline.
Choosing your team members
Once you have chosen your provider the next step is to choose your team members. Since you’re non-technical, the best advice is to go for as much experience as you can afford with programmers who have implemented similar features (and tech stacks – don’t let buttons and menus make you forget about servers and payment gateways). Your provider can help you with that.
Make sure you have provisions in your contract with your provider for swapping out developers who aren’t contributing satisfactorily. This mismatch is normally clear early on and as a result these provisions often expire after a few weeks. Your needs/cashflow might also change so maintain clear communication with your provider so you don’t surprise them with requests to upsize or downsize your team that fall outside your contract.
Please note that the developers you hire are still autonomous individuals, much like any employee. They are not bound by law to you or your project and managing them needs to be done with the same care and consideration you would manage any team. This does need to be pointed out to some people.
Managing your team
This is too big a topic for this article. Or any single article. You will be simultaneously managing a team and a software development project. If you can break up big ideas into small steps, can be patient in the face of the frustrations of software development, and can handle a stream of video calls, Slack messages and emails, you will work it out.
Remember – you’ll be working with experts who are all focused on the success of your project.
What are you waiting for?
You’ve got the big idea. Start making it happen. Work through the steps in this article. They’ll take time, but you will learn new things at every stage that will make each following step easier.
And if you want to chat about your idea and how it might be implemented, we love talking about this stuff. Get in contact with us for a chat.
